The purification of water may encompass a plurality of different types of operations, such as filtering for removal of particles, treatment to destroy microorganisms, either naturally occurring or added, and possibly removal or neutralization of inorganic salts. It has become common practice to chemically treat water for human use as by the addition of chlorine, however, this is a costly procedure and chlorine has now been determined to form suspected carcinogenic compounds. Ozone treatment of water has been employed and found to be very costly in terms of requisite energy expenditure for ozone production by the conventional plate discharge method, in addition to the fact that ozone is very hazardous. Reverse osmosis has also been employed, but to date, such systems are quite inefficient in the use of energy, and furthermore, may not inhibit passage of Gram negative organisms.
It has long been known and accepted that germicidal ultra-violet (UV) radiation will kill microorganisms and consequently UV radiation systems are employed for water purification. Unfortunately, UV radiation is highly attenuated by water and consequently, this manner of water purification has been quite limited.
The present invention provides a system of high intensity UV radiation which is combined with high efficiency ozone production in many applications, for economical and highly effective water purification.